Walking the Morris

The Morris Museum of Art

I have been out of the art game for nearly six years now. A good deal of the need for currency has sloughed off me. I was an art critic for 25 years, but now in retirement, I no longer keep up with this week’s latest and greatest.

There was a time when I believed that knowing where the art world was headed seemed important. The biggest names were those breaking new ground, forging ahead into an unseen future of art history. Now, such things seem unimportant, and the concern misguided. For one, prognosticators are almost always wrong; we always seem to head in some new directions unforeseeable. When I was very young, the future of art was most certainly found in abstraction. Nothing was so disparaged as figurative art, and worse, art with narrative.

Then came Pop. Cool, ironic, lowbrow and — fun. After that, bingo, along came Robert Longo, Mark Tansey and Cindy Sherman. Narrative and figurative — albeit with a great frosting of irony. There was politically engaged art, conceptual art, ironic politically engaged conceptual art. Comic book characters came, signing the Declaration of Independence. Then balloon animals made of shiny chrome. And, of course, the shark in formaldehyde.

I am not writing to disparage any of this art, but to remind you that trends come and go. Julian Schnabel is first the new thing, then the forgotten thing and then the joke reference.

But none of this actually matters. That is all stuff for the “Art World.” The Art World is only tangentially related to art. It is a parallel universe. The Art World in 1890 paid no attention at all to Vincent Van Gogh. Later, his paintings sell for million and millions. Did they get better over the years since his death?

Making such judgments of art-value are really rather pointless. You can fix the price of any painting or painter at auction, but, like the stock market, the values go up and down. The art remains unchanged.

No, keeping up with the latest shows, the hottest news, the catchiest trend, it has all fallen away. I no longer care. Let CNN announce the latest unfathomable number from the latest Christie’s auction; let Fox make fun of Jeff Koons. The art remains, waiting for us to see it for ourselves.

I am reminded of all this once again as I walk through the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Ga. The Morris is a small museum, dedicated to Southern art: art by Southern artists; art by non-native artists living in the South; and art made anywhere about the South. It opened in 1992 on the second floor of an office building in downtown Augusta, by the river. With some 5,000 works in its collection, it is small by comparison with any of the Big Boys.

“Candidates for the Horse Show,” 1893, John Martin Tracy

Yet, walking through its galleries gave me immense pleasure. There were a few familiar names, but most of the art was made by those with either regional reputations or little reputation at all. But what I came away with is the sense, reinforced, that there is an amazing amount of talent out there. You don’t have to be a brand name in a New York gallery to be worth the time. There is a great deal of art being made that is well-made, thoughtful, distinct and individual. Art that, if the cards had been shuffled just a bit differently, might well be the work we cover in the big art magazines.

“Toula Waterfalls,” William C.A. Frerichs

I knew at least five artists in my years in Arizona who could have shown in any 57th Street gallery with pride. I loved their work: Jim Waid; Mayme Kratz; Marie Navarre; Anne Coe; Bailey Doogan. Actually, I can think of another dozen whose work I enjoyed. Each state has its share of excellent artists who just never won the Blue New York Ribbon. All giving great pleasure and thoughtful content.

“Mrs. James F. Robinson,” Trevor Thomas Fowler

The Morris Museum features some historic art, mostly portraits from the 19th century, and a treasure of modern and contemporary art. There is glass and there are prints.

“The Art of Drawing” 1998, James William “Bo” Bartlett III

The longest gallery contains the modern and contemporary work and moving from canvas to canvas provided me with one pleasure after another. This may not be cutting edge, but it is sharp enough.

“The Merry Boatmen,” 2000, Terry Rowlett

The currents of Postmodernism are strong, but also the awareness of cultural roots.

“Gospel Sing,” 1997, Dale Kennington

The artists represented are diverse; not all old white men.

“Col. Poole’s Pig Hill of Fame,” 1995, John Braeder

The sense of Southernness is strong, and since I have been an adopted Southerner, deeply buried in a profoundly Southern family, much of it resonates strongly.

“Tobacco Setters on a Hilltop,” 1938, Stephen Alke

If the South ever was the “Desert of the Bozart,” it no longer is. (Really, it never was — count your Nobel Prize winners, the writers anthologized in school texts, the “classical music” of America: Jazz. The South is more profoundly aware of its cultural heritage, Black and White, than any other region I have lived in).

“Boundary Marker,” 2000, Kesler Woodward

We are misled if we think that art only counts if it is published in books. The fact is, that most of us only get to see the famous works in reproduction. But halftones can never capture the reality of a live work of art. You can gain more from seeing a lesser-known regional painting in person than from any slide in an art history class or jpeg on Google. The real thing is alive, not embalmed.

“Azalea Cafe,” 1994, Shirley Rabe Masinter

Indeed, just the work you read about is already second-hand; the opinion you have of it has already been filtered and siphoned by those who have gone before.

“Daughters of the South,” 1993, Jonathan Green

Seeing something fresh, uncategorized by authority, gives you the chance to discover it for yourself. Finding something unknown to the urbanized critics can make it your own. Like discovering a geode in the woods, or a Hermes handbag at the Goodwill.

“Cotton Barn at Beech Island, S.C.,” 1998, Wolf Kahn

There are many such smaller art museums around the country. The Portland Art Museum in Maine; the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut; the Storm King Art Center in New York; the Brandywine River Art Museum in Pennsylvania; the American Visionary Art Museum in Maryland; the Delaware Museum of Art; the Maier Museum of Art in Virginia; Bainbridge Museum of Art in Washington; the Reno Museum of Art in Nevada; the Rahr-West Art Museum in Wisconsin; the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum in Michigan; and too many others to list. Check out what you have near you.

“Rock Shop Billboard,” 2007, Julyan Davis

Most universities have art museums or galleries that are worth visiting.

Pretty much any way you can get to see art in the flesh is worth it. There is an astonishing amount of talent out there to be enjoyed.

Art is not some unimaginable enterprise reserved only for the cognoscenti. It is not something only made by the Enormous Reputations. Any art you actually get pleasure or ideas from is worth the time. And it’s all around.

About Richard Nilsen

Richard Nilsen made a living out of having opinions. He was born in New Jersey and handed down one of his first significant opinions by leaving.

He was art critic with “The Arizona Republic” from 1986 to 2012 and is proud of the fact that he was never shot at, although he was once hanged in effigy by “Western Horseman” magazine after a nasty review of Cowboy Art. Since 2005, he was also the classical music, opera, dance, architecture and back-up movie critic.

“It’s all connected,” he says.

But newspaper work is only one of a long and eclectic series of jobs and “life positions.”

He has been a truck driver, a book packer, a sales clerk. He has taught crime-scene photography to police cadets. He has worked at the Seattle zoo and as writer and editor on a Black weekly newspaper in Greensboro, N.C. He has been both a bum and a department head in a 2-year college, where he taught photography and art history.

He once lived for a year in a coal bin.

He graduated from Guilford College in North Carolina in 1970, but when asked about his credentials, is more likely to mention the zoo.